It Feels Strange Letting AI Pick the Questions

I went off the questions

I sat down at a park with a camera and a list of questions. AI had helped choose them from my life, my work and the things I had been talking about.

I was meant to answer the first question. Instead, I started talking about the fact that a machine had picked the questions in the first place.

That felt strange. I was there to share my own thoughts. Yet a growing part of the process around those thoughts had come from AI.

I could see how useful it was. I could also feel myself getting close to handing over more than I meant to.

I have given it a lot to work with

I use AI for work, for building apps and for making content. I also bring it questions about my life. It has become part of how I think things through.

Before AI, I had built apps and websites. Working with it has made parts of that work much easier for me. I have good reasons to keep using it.

So this is a question from someone who relies on it. The help is real. The uneasy feeling is real too.

It is easy to notice that AI helped me make something. It is harder to notice how much it helped choose what I would spend the day trying to make.

Who chooses what gets my attention?

The questions were based on things I care about. They drew on my history and my goals. I had asked for that help.

Still, there is a difference between having a thought and being prompted to have it. I found myself wondering about that while the camera was running.

I wanted to get better at sharing ideas. I wanted the result to feel like me. At the same time, the process could feel oddly manufactured.

I have been learning to record in my own voice. This felt like another part of that same problem: making room for my own reaction, even when it takes me away from the plan.

I can leave a question unanswered

Later in the recording, I came across a question I did not want to answer. I said so and moved on.

There were other questions I liked. There were ideas worth talking about. I did not need to accept every item on the list for the help to be useful.

That matters to me. Being open to a suggestion still leaves me with a choice about what to do with it.

I do not have one clean boundary worked out. I use AI in so many parts of my life that I am still learning what that boundary even looks like.

I want to keep asking this

I also talked about how hard I find it to stop working while the tools are still running. The help can change more of my day than I notice at first.

I am excited about what I can build. I want to keep learning. I also want to notice when I am following a plan just because it has been put in front of me.

For now, I am glad I went off the questions. The part I had not planned to talk about was the part I most wanted to say.